Longmont police received a call Friday morning from someone reporting a face in concrete in the river — specifically, Left Hand Creek, where it flows under a bridge at South Sunset Street.

An officer checked it out and discovered that, indeed, there was a doomed-looking visage with its mouth agape, staring at the sky with its nose, cheeks and chin protruding above the water’s surface.

But no foul play was involved. The concrete face was merely part of Longmont artist Jerry Boyle’s installation “101 Faces,” a series of pieces placed along the Left Hand Greenway.

The artist’s work, commissioned in 2004, includes faces in trees, embedded in grassy hillsides and, in this case, in the creek.

Steve Ransweiler, the city’s project manager on the Left Hand Flood Control Project, said that because of that project, many of the faces needed to be relocated from their original sites.

Longmont police Cmdr. Jeff Satur said it wasn’t the first time someone called to report Mr. Stone-Face-In-Creek, although he could not recall how many times cops had been called.

“It is pretty realistic, and now it has more moss on it. I first saw it last summer,” said Denise Daniel, who was walking her dog, Saffron, on the path Friday afternoon. “But no, I never thought it was a body.”

Boyle could not be reached for comment Friday. But he told the Times-Call years ago that his pieces, strewn along the trail as they are, are designed to get people looking around and paying more attention to their surroundings. If they’re noticing his faces, they’re probably paying more attention to the flora and fauna, he said.

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